IoT

IoT in Buildings: A Case Study

Smart Campus, Smart Technology

Stanford University focuses on ‘implementation’ to make IoT

a practical (and successful) reality across campus.

Stanford University is one of the world's leading research universities. It is known for its entrepreneurial character, drawn from the legacy of its founders, Jane and Leland Stanford, and its relationship to Silicon Valley. Areas of excellence range from the humanities to social sciences to engineering and the sciences. Stanford is located in California's Bay Area, one of the most intellectually dynamic and culturally diverse areas of the nation.

The Problem

Stanford is fortunate to be exposed to many new technologies thanks to research on campus and many new high-performance building projects. Unfortunately, we were experiencing technology overload. It became impractical to implement and then manage all that was possible. We realized that we first needed to build a set of “smart” business cases and then incorporate the right technology to achieve our goals. We had been interested in “IoT” for a long time, but it wasn’t until we focused on “implementation” that IoT became practical.

The Strategy

First we had to build a steering committee comprised of director-level staff representing each group involved with operating buildings. We realized that we must have a shared “smart campus” vision if we were to be successful with implementation. Stakeholders on the committee include those responsible for building controls, IT, MEP trades, renewal maintenance planning, customer service, call centers and more.

We next engaged a consulting firm to help us develop our master plan for smart campus and IoT implementation. We initiated the study in January 2016 and finished in June. In addition to helping to define our business cases, the study also helped define how to focus our tactical efforts. We identified four technical “corner stones” to build upon: 1) Building Controls, 2) IT Network, 3) Data Management and 4) Analytic Software Tools. We also identified that we had much work to do in a fifth area: how we organize and train our staff members to work in the new IoT environment.

We subsequently created a working group for each of the focus areas with complementary goals and schedules.

The Results

Aligning our efforts has enabled success in each of our working groups:

Building Controls – We have a standard that we are deploying on all new construction projects, and we are implementing a master plan to upgrade our portfolio of existing buildings. We ensure that points are properly named and tagged in the control system to enable easy sharing with other third party analytics tools.

IT Network – We have developed a new communications network design just for building operating systems. This ensures projects deploy quicker, are easier to maintain, and provide advanced security features.

Data Management – We have created our use case for a new “data lake” to serve as a reliable and scalable layer between our operating systems and data-using applications. Having this layer enables us to standardize protocols for putting data into the lake and pulling data out. This ensures that we have only one security connection to maintain per system or application. It also eliminates the need to make point to point connections between every operating system and every data-using application.

Analytics – Utilizing our new building controls, IT network and data management standards, we have successfully implemented two fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) pilot projects and are embarking on a third.

Working With It

From the start we knew that it was critical for our building controls team to work closely with our IT support group. What we didn’t expect was how well we would work together. We have found that building controls subject matter experts complement well the knowledge of IT infrastructure support professionals.

Obviously, there is a lot of overlap between modern building controls and IT, but where we previously saw conflict due to overlap, we now are realizing economies of scope by getting the right experts focused on what they do best.

The things that worry controls engineers the most (server hardware and network reliability) are easy for the IT experts; and what worries IT the most (undocumented IP devices and unknown system users) are easy for the controls team to address. How we manage our control systems infrastructure (both the controls hardware and the IT network) is much more efficient now.

Procuring Integrators

Stanford works with a portfolio of controls integrators and also ensures that our internal staff are capable of self-performing critical project and maintenance tasks. We require our contractors to demonstrate minimum levels of project experience before doing any work on campus and also achieving professional certification where applicable.

We also recently initiated our own internal training program for our contractors. The training focuses on how to satisfy our building controls specifications and offers insight into why Stanford does things the way we do.

Justifying the Cost

Justifying the cost of implementing an IoT strategy to upper management was easy. We told them that it wouldn’t cost any more than what we were already budgeting. Once all of the internal stakeholders got together we realized that we each had budget allocated for making the buildings better. Some budgets focused on energy, some on IT security, some on safety, some on occupant satisfaction, and many other areas. We realized if we aligned our efforts, we could pool our funds and achieve our mutual success.

The other key realization was that we don’t have to implement everything immediately. We are currently working under a seven-year implementation plan, which is actually much faster than was recommended to us by our consultant. This spreads the costs out, and takes advantage of the natural attrition of some buildings and the many new construction projects that the University implements.

What's Next

The future is all about leveraging big data to save costs (energy, labor, material) and improve occupant performance. This will only be possible by completing our smart campus infrastructure and ensuring that we can maintain all the technology we’ve put in place.

This case study was compiled by Cochrane Supply & Engineering in partnership with Gerry Hamilton of Stanford University. Gerry is the director of facilities energy management at Stanford University. His role includes directing the operation of campus energy management and control systems and management of the university's energy retrofit programs. Gerry and his team ensure that buildings and associated processes are operated efficiently and that new facilities incorporate best practices for energy use.